The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: comes naturally and inevitably out of man. It is the point to
which all development tends. It is the differentiation to which
all organisms grow. It is the perfection that is inherent in every
mode of life, and towards which every mode of life quickens. And
so Individualism exercises no compulsion over man. On the
contrary, it says to man that he should suffer no compulsion to be
exercised over him. It does not try to force people to be good.
It knows that people are good when they are let alone. Man will
develop Individualism out of himself. Man is now so developing
Individualism. To ask whether Individualism is practical is like
asking whether Evolution is practical. Evolution is the law of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Message by Honore de Balzac: put to me. At every turn of a wood, in every beaten pathway, I
rehearsed a modern version of the scene in which Sosie describes
the battle to his lantern. To my shame be it said, I had thought
at first of nothing but the part that _I_ was to play, of my own
cleverness, of how I should demean myself; but now that I was in
the country, an ominous thought flashed through my soul like a
thunderbolt tearing its way through a veil of gray cloud.
What an awful piece of news it was for a woman whose whole
thoughts were full of her young lover, who was looking forward
hour by hour to a joy which no words can express, a woman who had
been at a world of pains to invent plausible pretexts to draw him
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